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And Then We Just Stopped And Thought About Just How Far We'd Come
A man and his mech stand on the edge of a cliff, looking out at the majestic landscape of an alien world. In that red package is everything they struggled to carry across endless space, to get here. But how in blazes are they going to make it to that gas giant hanging on the horizon? This concept art comes via Marek Tamowicz, and it’s called “Emerion.” Check out tons more of Tamowicz’s art over at Deviant Art. Concert By Charlie Jane Anders Proposals GenjiChu When he realized his calculations were correct, his heart sank and he knew that the moon they were standing on, the planet they’d sacrificed everything to reach was slowly spiraling down in a decaying orbit and on a collision course with the mother planet. Cartoonivore “Hello? Yes Septuple A? Hi, I locked my keys in my chicken walker ... yeah! Yeah, you know, just trying to get home and then, whoops! You know how it goes ... What? Oh, it’s uh .... L5-729, Emerion Sector ... Yeah, yeah the green one with the things in the sky. How soon can you get someone out here? ... 47 years? Huh ... What? No, no that’s fine. Alright then send ‘em over. It’s an green 87, chicken walker ... I’m parked on the edge of a cliff in the norther hemisphere ...Well I’m the only one on the planet so it shouldn’t be too difficult .... alright. Okay thank you very much, you’ve been very helpful. Okay. Okay, yes, thank you. You too, g’bye.” Bird MILF Unnamed Swampland, Latitude 35 Degrees, Longitude 143 Degrees Kurtsweil 234-V Deep Periphery 18 December 3058 They always said it’s not really the heat, but the humidity that’ll get to you. The air sticks to you, has a weight to it, a physical presence, suffocating and inescapable. And after a week of trekking through the sopping atmosphere of Kurtsweil 234-V, following up spotty intel, Tai Bridger has been gotten to. Oh Lord how he’d been gotten to. The cockpit of his Locust smelt like a swamp, and he little better. The atmosphere did more than disagree with him. It hated him and he it right back. Further, his neurohelmet was starting to feel like a vice on his temples and the Explorer Core issued rations tasted like imitation sawdust... stale imitation sawdust. Had he the option, he was this close to telling Comstar to stuff the commission up their ass. This close. But then he’d remember the all the digits it had and how those digits meant that he could finally pay off that swindler on Outreach (Pennyworth. Not his real name. The fucking gall...), drop a new condenser on that buggy heat sink AND have enough to send back a little nugget to mom. Never mind the fact that he was 500 lightyears deep into the periphery and thus in for the duration... In for the duration... Bridger wiped sweat from his upper lip, took a drag from the moist cigarette and considered how he had zero options but to suck it up and deal. And with just another two days to the lift zone he could carefully ration his last eight smokes (Why didn’t I just bring the carton?) and maybe make it off Kurtsweil 234-V with his sanity kind-of-sort-of intact. A pair of thuds that sounding like the Hand of God smacking the whole world shook Bridger and everything around him. Flinching, he dropped his half-finished cigarette. Two bright streaks arced overhead. “Shit!” Bridger snapped open a case on his belt and withdrew a small pair of rangefinder-binoculars, pointing them to the sky as quick as he could. He only had a couple of seconds to take them in before they disappeared behind the mountains, and it was hard to see much more than bright white-light spots with tails, but Bridger had seen this enough times to know a dropship, no two dropships when he saw them. And they ain’t two of ours... Bridger holstered his nocs and scrambled back his Locust’s retractable ladder. Before his eyes had adjusted to the cockpit’s dim light, his fingers danced across the keys that brought his comm online and snapped his throat mic into place. “Ibn Battuta, this is 23 Skiddo. Come in Ibn Battuta. Over.” “23 Skiddo, this is Ibn Battuta Actual. Over.” “I just eyeballed zero-two dropships, repeat zero-two dropships burning in, heading north-Noth-west of my current position at 134.2 by 717.6 Grid-A. Over.” “We see them too, 23 Skiddo. Magnetic-Resonance readings are consistent with two Union-C’s. Over.” The “C” suffix meant Clan, which meant that these were probably clanners which meant that the intel may not have been so spotty which meant that... Fuck... life was about to get “interesting.” “What’s your read, Ibn Battuta? Over.” Bridger asked, really not wanting to. “Flight trajectory analysis has them landing on a plain 320 klicks north of your position...” In the pause as Ibn Battuta beamed him the info, Bridger could feel Demi-Precentor Lio thinking the same thing he was, “... Might make a nice place for that Jaguar supply depot we heard about. 23 Skiddo...” No, no, no... “... how are you on supplies? Over.” “One moment...” Bridger switched his mic off long enough to sigh and mutter a curse, “I have seven more days of rations and ten of water if I reclamate.... Over.” “Your estimation of time to the projected drop site from your position? Over.” “A day, day and a half if it gets rough. Over.” “That’s about what we figure over here. Please wait. Over.” Bridger lolled his head back into the command couch, letting the sweat sluice off as he, for the first time since he was a child, crossed his fingers as he awaited news. “New orders 23 Skiddo: Proceed north to the projected drop site, now designated waypoint Tau and observe from a safe distance for zero-four hours minimum, two-four hours maximum. Confirm what you can of the intel, then proceed back to Ibn Battuta. Maintain radio silence. Over.” “Ibn Battuta, isn’t lift off scheduled for 51 hours from now? Over.” “There’s slack in the schedule, 23 Skiddo. We’ll still make our jump. Over.” Bridger banged his head once into the command couch, flicked his mic off just long enough for another, more venomous (and certainly louder) curse, then replied, “Orders received, Ibn Battuta. Heading towards waypoint Tau. 23 Skiddo, over and out.” “Ibn Battuta Actual, over and out.” Bridger hit the switch to retract the ladder, brought the reactor up to full and strapped on that clamp of a neurohelmet one more time. As he put his Locust’sbirdlike feet to the path once more, he could not help but think that old saw that people had told themselves since antiquity, then one they saved for when life had’em by the scrot and they had to just take it: Time to earn your paycheck... ... and then begin to wonder just how the hell he was going to stretch eight cigarettes over another three... or four... more days. Christ, why didn’t I just bring the carton? chuckster1124 “Boss, it’s Dave... yeah, this address is bad.... What do I mean bad? It’s the wrong bloody planet!... I’m looking at the right planet right now! ....No, I’m not standing on it, it’s in the freaking sky above me! No way I can make a delivery today... when? Next Thursday minimum, and I better get my overtime!” Valarie Noticing the man’s struggle and realizing the impossibility of the situation, the ever resourceful mech handed the traveler a spork and fashioned itself into a picnic table, suggesting the traveler should enjoy the fruit tart from the newly discovered planet himself.